First person pronoun speaks up
Another brave activist steps up to tell us all about qrxself.
As I opened the envelope last summer – during the beginning of warmer weather and, aptly, of Pride season – I felt like I was opening the next chapter of my life.
The envelope contained my deed poll – a legal document that proved I changed my name – and receiving it was one of the most joyful and emotional moments of my transition. I identify as non-binary; and the deed poll confirmed my name is – at long last – Dee Whitnell.
Is that the most exciting thing you’ve ever read or what?
But I haven’t always been able to celebrate my identity in this way – far from it. For as long as I can remember, I’ve never felt like a girl or a boy.
I didn’t fit into either group at school, and either isolated myself by hanging out on my own because I thought I was the only one to experience these feelings, or threw myself into hyper-femininity to try to convince myself that I was a girl. I grew my hair long, fake-tanned and wore my school skirt rolled up to make it shorter – because that’s what the girls did.
Meanwhile every single one of the other girls, of course, had no such feelings or qualms or doubts whatsoever, because they were all dull conformist drones, unlike Precious Self.
There’s a whole lot more in the same vein, about how her mother doesn’t get it about her name, and how hard it is to vote, and enthralling details like that. A feast of delights for the narcissist-fancier.
“I thought I was the only one to experience these feelings”
You know, I have my share of oddities and quirks, but I have never been under the delusion that I am so rare and unique that I experience feelings nobody else does.
But that doesn’t mean you’re neither male nor female. And I would have hoped, by now, that you would feel like an adult, but I can see that’s going to be some time coming, if ever.
Screechy – I think I thought that when I was very young – at least, not explicitly “the only person ever” but a generalized “I’m different” that stemmed from being Not One of the Popular Kids at school. I’ve been self-correcting ever since. “Yeah you and everyone else” I tell myself daily if not hourly.
I imagine most of us on this site felt like we weren’t one of the kids, or at least felt it part of the time. I didn’t have a ‘set’. I was ‘different’. Until I got into a group where I wasn’t ‘different’. I found my niche, and it didn’t require me to claim some odd gender identity to belong.
That’s the thing: probably most kids feel that at least some of the time.
“I thought I was the only one to experience these feelings,” seems to be the basis for a lot of this. The precious themselves can’t really understand that what they’re experiencing is not unique to them. Hell, it’s probably not even uncommon. It may even be a normal experience that they’re interpreting abnormally.
But much of trans identitarianism strives to maintain that “otherness” and “specialness” as a way of remaining more interesting and important than everyone else, including each other. It’s one-upmanship and Oppression Olympics blended into a toxic. narcissistic stew. They want to fit in but they want the spotlight, too. How else do they get to be “celebrated”, “cherished”, “centered”, etc.?
Oh good point. It’s true.
I suppose we all want that to some extent, but transism is particularly obsessive about it.
Two unrelated things come to mind:
Life of Brian “You’re all individuals”.
An interview with some genderist person. He was asked about his “intersectionality”, and he replied with some laundry list of gender ideology and sexuality terms, perhaps some ethnic affiliations, I don’t recall. The interviwer replied, impressed, “Nice”. As if that was impressive, as if that had anything to do with “intersectionality”.
So, if she’s on the run from all the trappings of being perceived as female, why pick a name like Dee? Never once have I ever met or heard of a bloke called Dee. Tell me again how this is helping?
Dee Murray, Elton John Band.
Interesting. I have known people named Dee, and they were all male.
Maybe that’s why. It sounds sort of non-binary to her.
I owe my cumbersome name to the fact that my greatgrandfather changed his name by deed poll (at the insistence of his wife, who thought that his name was “common”) in 1873. For a long time I thought that a deed poll was a fancy legal document requiring lawyers, courts, etc. Not at all. Technically it is a contract with one party. It needed a public statement to the effect that one had made the change, and had to be registered with the appropriate authority. It’s hard to imagine a simpler procedure for creating a legal document, so I cannot imagine why Dee Whitnell regarded it as an achievement be proud of.
For what it’s worth, here is my greatgrandfather’s declaration:
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I WILLIAM CORNISH-BOWDEN, heretofore known as WILLIAM BOWDEN, of Newton Abbot, in the County of Devon, Esquire, a Captain in her Majesty’s Royal Navy, do hereby declare and make known that I have taken and assumed, and do intend from and after this day, to take and assume for myself the surname of CORNISH, in addition to and immediately preceding my name of BOWDEN; and by the name of WILLIAM CORNISH-BOWDEN intend hereafter to be known, and the same to use in all matters and on all occasions as my proper name. And for the better evidencing such change or assumption, I have executed a Deed Poll of even date herewith, which is intended to be forthwith enrolled in Her Majesty’s High Court of Chancery declaring such my intention.
Dated this Eleventh day of January, 1873.
W. CORNISH-BOWDEN.
Witness—T. E. DRAKE, Solicitor, Exeter.
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Notice that the witness was a lawyer. His lack of enthusiasm for the change was expressed in a letter to his sister:
My dear Sister Bess,
What do you think of the enclosed? Is it not a thing to be ashamed of at my time of life. Oh dear!
Master Fred & his wife, my wife & Grannie were too many for me, so I am W. C. Bowden for life.
Thank you commenters. It appears that Dee is perhaps related to culture as to whether it reads as feminine or masculine, rather like when I read that one of the ways Jazz Jennings “knew” he was a girl was his interest in soccer, which is far more associated with boys in much of the world.